With 150 or so teams in the sweaty, agriculturally scented summer air here at Buttonwillow racetrack in Merle Haggard country, the vehicle inspections at the third annual Arse-Sweat-a-Palooza 24 Hours of LeMons seemed to take far longer than just the seven hours the LeMons Supreme Court spent waving our Cheatonium-239 detectors around. The race itself will run for 24 straight hours, one of the few that isn’t split into two race sessions due to track noise regulations, and it will probably feel like 48 hours. There are plenty of air-cooled Germans, plenty of weird engine swaps, and then there’s the 1959 Humber Super Snipe wagon.

This car had been under construction for many months, and we weren’t sure that we’d ever see it ready for racing. With its 3.0-liter hemi pushrod six made by Armstrong-Siddeley, hand-crank starting option, Borg-Warner automatic transmission, and Lucas electrics, this is the weirdest British car in the history of LeMons racing.

Will it start spitting very heavy engine parts in all directions within minutes of hitting the race track? Will it run flawlessly for 24 straight hours? With no previous Humber LeMons machinery to give us an idea of what to expect, there’s no telling!

The Jaguar V-12 is one of the best-sounding engines in LeMons racing. This XJ-S isn’t the quickest or most reliable racers in the series, but all conversation among spectators comes to a halt when it screams past at full throttle.

We’ll have two Beetles and three Porsche 914s attempting to cool their white-hot cylinders with mid-90-degree air tomorrow.

This Beetle features a 914/VW Transporter engine and some cooling ducts that the team hopes will keep engine temperatures below nuclear-fusion levels.

The “Mormon Missile” Olds Quad 442 that turned exactly one lap before complete engine meltdown at last year’s Arse Sweat is back for more. On paper, the Quad 4 should be a fine racing powerplant.